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South Korea said it may start commercial whaling if Japan wins a controversial compromise with the International Whaling Commission, observers to a meeting of the body said Wednesday.

Under the compromise, Japan would be allowed to hunt whales near its coast while scaling down its Antarctic hunts.

Conservationists immediately slammed the development during the three-day meeting in Rome, while saying it was not unexpected.

"We've been warning all along that if Japan gets a deal other countries are going to want part of the action," Sue Fisher, policy director for North America for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), told AFP.

"It's no surprise that they said that," said Sara Holden of Greenpeace International. "South Korea's position on whaling has been fairly consistent throughout."

Japan hunts hundreds of whales a year in the Pacific and Antarctic using a loophole in a 1986 IWC moratorium that allows "lethal scientific research" on the ocean giants.

Norway hunts whales on the strength of a formal reservation to the moratorium, while Iceland has set its own quota in defiance of the ban.

"Coastal whaling (for Japan) would legitimise what Iceland and Norway are doing," WDCS spokesman Nicolas Entrup told AFP. "The reputation of an international treaty needs to be held up."

Greenpeace issued a terse statement saying "no whales were saved" at the IWC meeting, which it described as "disturbingly uneventful" while calling for "an urgent plan of action that would stop whaling in Antarctic waters and begin the modernisation of the IWC."

The 63-year-old IWC, which is to hold its annual meeting in Madeira, Portugal from June 22-26, voiced "cautious optimism" after the Rome talks.

"I am heartened at ... the general commitment to continue to further develop a set of proposals that can command broad agreement," said IWC chairman William Hogarth of the United States in a statement.

The IWC "deplored acts of violence against ships and once again unanimously called for action to be taken by the relevant authorities," the statement said, referring to alleged attacks by anti-whaling campaigners on Japanese research vessels.